March 7, 2012

The government official who called it that doesn't know his movies very well. Or... at least I hope he doesn't know his movies very well.

"We looked at the product and we objected to it because it used connective tissues instead of muscle. It was simply not nutritionally equivalent [to ground beef]. My main objection was that it was not meat."

By the way, "pink slime" is a movie reference too. Remember "The Green Slime"? That was back in the day when "green" seemed evil and gross. It was 1968, during that brief shining moment when American culture abounded with hippies, but the environmentalists had not yet arrived. I'm thinking of hippies, because I remember how "The Green Slime" was recommended to me at the time: "All the heads are seeing 'Green Slime.'"

Speaking of heads and reindulging in the green-or-pink slime of American pop culture in the 1960s, here's the bathroom scene from The Monkees movie "Head." Don't worry. It's a slime-free, meat-free bathroom, but don't open the medicine cabinet...

... and remember nobody ever lends money to a man with a sense of humor.

Custer and microbiologist Gerald Zernstein concluded in a study that the trimmings are a "high risk product," but Zernstein tells The Daily that "scientists in D.C. were pressured to approve this stuff with minimal safety approval" under President George H.W. Bush's administration. The USDA asserts that its ground beef purchases "meet the highest standard for food safety."

I don't get the big deal. We are made of lots of connective tissue and I assume consuming it would help us build more. Without it, we would be nothing but pink slime. Sure it's not the same as muscle meat, but that doesn't make it bad for you. All this talk is making me hungry for a nice big cup of connective tissue. It builds strong bodies.

I don't get the big deal. We are made of lots of connective tissue and I assume consuming it would help us build more.

Part of the problem is that the "meat" is being treated with ammonium hydroxide to kill pathogens like salmonella and E. coli. Not the best stuff. Part of that problem, I would suggest, is that the reason that this stuff is called "Lean Beef Trimmings" is that it is the stuff that is cut off and dropped on the floor or the like during butchering and rendering. It has to have the ammonium hydroxide added because of where it has been.

Then, there is the problem that we saw a school recently force kids to eat this sort of stuff, instead of the lunches that their parents packed for them, which most likely included real meat, etc.

Indeed, how much nutrition is in this stuff? The reason that we don't eat connective tissue that much is that it is tough and lacks much in the way of protein. Also, what else is in the trimmings? Hooves and/or bone? Wouldn't be surprising, given that some of our pets get hooves and/or bone, along with other "trimmings" in their cheaper feed - but they are descended from much more carnivorous stock than we (their wolf ancestors would more likely eat this stuff than we, and we would more likely find other uses than food for it).

So, one way that you can look at this is that our children are being forced to eat the equivalent of lower priced dog food, all to save the government money. And, since the same Department is both inspecting the food and providing it to the kids, there is the question of whether their standards have been compromised in order to save money, in order to spend it on other things, like higher salaries, bigger boondoggles, more employees, etc.

I don't get the big deal. We are made of lots of connective tissue and I assume consuming it would help us build more.

Another point here is that what the kids need more than anything is protein, and connective tissue is not nearly as good of a source of this as muscle. And, there is probable even less protein in some other stuff that may be (almost literally) swept into the category of "trimmings".

“The disease may be most easily transmitted to human beings by eating food contaminated with the brain, spinal cord or digestive tract of infected carcasses. However, it should also be noted that the infectious agent, although most highly concentrated in nervous tissue, can be found in virtually all tissues throughout the body, including blood.”

Hooves and/or bone? Wouldn't be surprising, given that some of our pets get hooves and/or bone, along with other "trimmings" in their cheaper feed - but they are descended from much more carnivorous stock than we (their wolf ancestors would more likely eat this stuff than we, and we would more likely find other uses than food for it).

This false meme as it related to McDonald's nuggets started a flame war with my lady acquaintances on facebook. I think I won, but I was shocked at the hatred I got for simply asking questions.

My 9-year-old daughter has been reduced to tears when passing by the golden arches, thinking of the blood, guts, and bones of chickens all smashed together and swirled with ammonia. (Kids love to share Snopes fables).

I tried to stand up for science and reason -- this chef person is always the only person in authority quoted as saying we're all gonna die from ammonium nitrate, which is *used* in *bombs*! Good Heavens!!! We're gonna blow!

Good point, but it isn't sold as "meat", and I seem to remember that a lot of cooking goes into preparing it. A lot more cooking than goes into cooking meat for consumption. Could be wrong though.

"“The [mad cow] disease may be most easily transmitted to human beings by eating food contaminated with the brain, spinal cord or digestive tract of infected carcasses. However, it should also be noted that the infectious agent, although most highly concentrated in nervous tissue, can be found in virtually all tissues throughout the body, including blood.”"

Good point, but odds and percentages do matter here. And, not sure how well the level of cooking going into the meat helps, and doubt that the ammonium hydroxide will be of much help either.

I think that Pogo's point stands, that these "trimmings" are more probably likely to contain the Mad Cow prions than regular meat, since care is supposed to be taken with the later to not include the parts of cows most likely to contain the prions.

My bologna has a first name.It's O.S.C.A.R...(Jeffrey Dahmer's favorite jingle)

Prions are the scariest thing I can conceive. They are smaller than virus', and not really alive. Packets of genome strands floating around in the world that get ingested, insert themselves into your DNA, and then you go crazy. The opposite of kids, except for the crazy part.

I imagine this is much ado about nothing. It may make YOUR kids sick but Sushi, and Mongolia go to a private school so as long as they are safe, its okay. Your President dictates this!

It really is Bush's fault though. If he hadn't been such a giant douche just think about how different the world would be...We'd be fightin' more wars for one thing, so maybe that peace prize is warranted! And ...and...I got nuthin' else. Just Johnny Mac runnin' his mouth off some more.

None of this sounds very scientific if you ask me. A lot of it could have this or it could be that. It could cure cancer too, so give me some facts. If it has dangerous biological agents in it then that is detectable and simply may or may not be higher than normal meat. How about some facts beyond: we gave it a scary name and think it's icky how they make it.

We do love sausage don't we and don't panic about it?

The most damming this is that it's been reject by the major fast food companies, despite being very cheap. That tells me more than anything else that it is probably not a good product. But even that could have been a concern more about the bad press they might get from using a maligned product.